


Experimentation in Trauma Management

by neveralarch



Category: Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: BFA: Sympathy for the Devil, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-04
Updated: 2010-06-04
Packaged: 2017-10-14 05:15:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neveralarch/pseuds/neveralarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Master never used to be the one that couldn't deal with reality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Experimentation in Trauma Management

**Author's Note:**

> Deals with alcoholism and drug use. See end of story for a brief historical note.

The Master spent his youth on Gallifrey searching for clarity. So much of that place seemed fake and scripted, carefully painted lies over unfortunate truths. He never indulged in any of the consciousness-altering intoxicants that many academy students turned to in an effort to escape the monotony of the academy.

(Theta was drunk or high most nights, an enforced haze simultaneously dulling and accentuating his brilliance. Koschei sat alone, watching Theta celebrate with like-minded students until the intoxicants caught up with the party. Koschei always made sure Theta returned safely to his room, while the friends of the moment passed out on the floor.)

When he left Gallifrey, the Master never bothered to go into a drinking place or a drug den, even on planets famous for their encouragement of indulgence. Why stop to cloud your vision when there was so much to see?

(The Doctor got high on life, literally, on the psychic patterns emitted by his companions when they were excited and amazed. He didn’t need to stop exploring to indulge in an altered reality; maturity had given him the ability to multitask.)

It was only when the Master found himself trapped on Earth that he began to understand the pleasures of forced haziness. He doesn't want to see this world, not the facade, not the reality.

He started drinking after the first massacre he ever witnessed. Got a bottle of rotgut from a passing soldier and drank until he couldn't see the torn faces of the dead anymore. Kept drinking until he no longer cared.

Years passed where he was sober for as little time as possible, just enough to keep things running and his body repairing itself. He wasn't going to die, neither from drink nor at the hands of the Chinese. But he needed the alcohol, needed it to keep the dead at bay.

(The Master’s last stab at keeping things running for the Chinese might have suffered a bit from his lack of sobriety. The pieces wouldn’t fit together quite right, and the plac fell apart in the end. The Doctor probably noticed, probably smelled the brandy on his breath when the Master ranted at him outside that monastery, but he didn’t say anything, and the Master can pretend that it didn’t matter. He can still see blood when he closes his eyes, and he can't get away without help; better to impair his reactions and planning a little than to sober up and lose his senses completely.)

He can't keep to the bottle as much anymore, not now that UNIT officers are constantly hounding him for results, results, results. The habit remains, nevertheless.

The Master is sitting on his laboratory floor with a bottle of scotch, hidden from view of the door to his lab by the steel table he's sitting behind. He could swear that the bottle was full a moment ago, but something seems to have happened to 3/4 of it.

The door creaks open, and that pestering nuisance of a colonel, Brimmicombe-Wood steps through. The Master can see his shoes, scuffed and dirty. The man always looks like he's coming off a hard mission in a swamp. Well, he often is, to be fair.

"Master? Where are you?"

The Master curls tighter around his bottle, trying to be less visible. The colonel finds him anyway, walking around the table and then starting when he kicks the Master's leg accidentally. He recovers quickly, apparently unsurprised to find his scientific advisor in such an odd position.

"I wanted to talk to you," the colonel begins, and then stops as he looks at the Master more closely. His eyes latch on to the scotch, and then flicker to the Master’s face. The Master scowls and tries to set down his bottle and stand up, but neither of those things work out quite right. He just slumps into a more awkward position instead, knocking over his scotch. There's not even enough left in the bottle to spill.

"Goddamn it," says the colonel, looking dark. The Master stares, glassily, not quite able to bring himself to care about what happens now.

"You," says the colonel, "are supposed to be working out what went wrong with the vaccine. Not pickling yourself. We lost ten good men today, and it cannot be allowed to happen again, even if you are a souse."

"Mm," says the Master, not sure if he's assenting or protesting.

"Fuck's sake," says the colonel, and reaches down, pulling the Master to his feet. "Did you get anything done at all, or did you decide that drinking alone was more important than keeping my men alive? You're fucking useless.” He drops the Master’s hands, and looks straight at him, jaw set. “I ought to execute you as a traitor after all, and good riddance to you."

The Master stiffens under the abuse, and his head comes up, his shoulders back. The colonel takes a step away, looking a little wary. Neither of them have forgotten what happened to the man whose tie the Master still wears.

"For your information, Colonel," says the Master, speaking slowly in order to avoid slurring his words, "I have discovered 'what went wrong.' What good it may do you."

"Don't bother with the editorials, just spit it out."

The Master leans against the steel table nonchalantly, more for the effect than from a need to steady himself. He can feel himself begin to sober up. The Time Lord resistance to human alcohol is a terrible thing.

"The virus is getting stronger, stronger than any vaccine I know how to synthesize. The precautions we were taking - the masks and so on - aren't going to be enough. But we don't have anything else to replace them with." He giggles in the hysterical way this regeneration is prone to. "We'll all be infected and die, from what I can tell."

"We are _not_ going to die," says the colonel, stepping closer, grabbing the Master's lapels, losing his fear of his subordinate in his angry resistance to the inevitable. "You are going to figure out how to stop this 'flu, and we are going to save the populace, and then UNIT will gracefully accept a permanent base from the thankful Chinese government."

"Don't be ridiculous, Colonel." The Master tries to brush Brimmicombe-Wood off, but he can't seem to detach the man. He resigns himself to being manhandled. "This isn't some mild bug. It's obviously either man-made or alien in origin."

"Fix. It." says the colonel, dropping his hands. He walks away, pulling the lab door open and slamming it, making the Master flinch.

His head hurts. The problem with sobering up quickly is that you get to the hangovers quickly as well.

With the colonel gone, the Master’s alone with his thoughts once more. The faces of the men who died today stare at him from the darker corners of the lab, their faces flushed and sweaty, their eyes glazed as they burn up on the inside. He'd only stopped into the infirmary for a moment, just to pick up the test samples, but the images of the men dying on the cots have been with him for the rest of the day.

(The Doctor would have saved them. But he's not here, is he? Run off with his Brigadier, left the Master here to deal with these little local messes. Abandoned him to the dead and dying.)

The Master's not an emotional man, not this time around. He doesn't really care for these human's lives, he assures himself. It's just disgust for the uselessness of it all, contempt for pointlessly wasted lives which could so easily have been put to a greater purpose.

The Master's hands find another bottle, this one unlabeled. He's not sure where it came from, but he uncorks it all the same, taking a long pull before turning to his equipment. Work to be done.

**Author's Note:**

> Historical reference: in 1997, during and after the handover of Hong Kong from British to Chinese governance, a strain of avian influenza (H5N1) was rampant in Hong Kong, spreading from birds to at least 18 humans, with six deaths. On December 29th, the government began a cull of all chickens in Hong Kong, in an attempt to halt the spread of the H5N1 virus. No further human cases were detected.
> 
> In the Sympathyverse, the virus was apparently augmented to the point of becoming an epidemic. Despite the differences in virulence, getting rid of the chickens was ultimately still the deciding factor in the fight to halt the deaths. The Master was moderately pleased that his last-ditch strategy of ‘kill everyone’ was actually advisable for once, even if it was limited to birds.


End file.
